Author name: Sandra Tayler

Phase 1: Collecting orders
Phase 2: Sorting
Phase 3: Inventory preparation

Phase 4: Printing Postage

This is the point at which we start to spend serious money. We have to purchase over $10,000 of postage in order to get all the packages to their destinations. The service I use to print our postage is Stamps.com. I have to pay a monthly fee and download a program to my computer, but once that is done, I have the ability to print mailing labels and matching postage with my printer at home.

First I have to move the address data from the online store system and into the stamps.com application. Unfortunately these two pieces of software are unable to communicate with each other meaningfully. Fortunately they both are compatible with Microsoft excel. So I download the address data into a csv (comma separated value) file. Then I upload the csv into the stamps.com application. The stamps.com app automatically sorts the names into alphabetical order. This is why the final step of the sorting phase is alphabetizing by name.

I grab a list from my filebox. Lets say it is a list of people who have ordered a single book and they all want Petey as their sketch, also they’ve chosen Parcel Post as their shipping method. There are about 40 of these orders. I flip through the paper invoices, checking the boxes in the stamps.com app for the names that match the invoices. Stamps.com verifies all the addresses and sometimes suggests corrections. Most of the corrections are things like changing “Avenue” to “Ave” or adding additional digits to the postal code. I then select the appropriate shipping method and package weight. I make sure the labels are loaded into the printer, then I click print. The labels print. I clip them to the stack of invoices and put them back into their slot in the file box. Then I proceed to the next list.

As the labels are printed, the cost for each label is deducted from the credit I have on file with Stamps.com. When the balance reaches zero, I have to buy more postage. Fortunately they have a credit card on file and so I can purchase more postage with a few clicks. Again I am working with a system that is not designed for what I’m trying to do. Stamps.com will not allow me to purchase more than $250 of postage credit with them. When I am printing postage for a big shipping, I’ll purchase additional postage many times in a short space of time. Purchasing $3000 of anything in $200 increments, looks suspicious to a credit card company. Right around the $3000 mark, the company will place a hold on my card. This is a major reason why I have to start printing postage a week in advance of the shipping day. I have to leave time for the phone calls necessary to get the hold removed from the credit card. Twice. The first hold is removed by the use of an automated system. The second hold shunts me to a human being who asks me all sorts of identity verification questions. I then explain that we will be buying a huge amount of postage over the next few days and would they please stop interfering. Then they put a manager-approved “Do not hold” order on the card, which lasts for about a week. We do not carry this postage as a balance on our card. I pay off the amounts the same day I make the charges.

The other reason I start printing postage a week in advance is because of the international orders. Stamps.com has the ability to print out customs forms, but they can not be done in batches. Each form must list the contents of the package and be formated for the country to which the package is being sent. This requires me to hand enter information for each order. It is still much better than having to write customs forms by hand, which is how I used to do International orders. Each international order takes about a minute to process. There are about 300 international orders. This means a solid 5 hours of work for me to get all of them printed. International orders are not printed on stickers. They are printed on paper which then has to be folded or cut and shoved into clear sticker pouches that will be affixed to the exterior of the packages. The cutting and stuffing is another few hours. All of it must be done carefully to make sure that the right customs form stays with the right invoice.

When I am done with all the postage printing. I have two file boxes full of paper which cost me over $10,000 and yet none of it is redeemable for anything except packages going through the mail. I am extremely careful with those boxes until the next stage, Phase 5 Packaging and Mailing.

Phase 1: Collecting orders
Phase 2: Sorting

Phase 3: Inventory Preparation
This phase of shipping preparation runs concurrently with phase 2 and phase 4. This is because the lion’s share of the work during this phase is done by Howard or other volunteers rather than me. It is during this phase that I make sure we have all the supplies and inventory necessary to fulfill all the orders.

This phase begins when a truck pulls into our driveway and drops of pallets of books. We make arrangements to have 3/5 of the books transported to the storage unit. Those books become our inventory for the next couple of years. The rest of the books have to be signed and sketched for shipping. We arrange a day to have a volunteer come help us. This time we shanghaied a neighbor. He would bring a box of books into the house, open it up, and put all the books into a neat stack on our kitchen counter. Howard grabs the stack and starts signing the covers. Every so often the neighbor would grab the stacks of signed books and deliver them to the kitchen table. I am sitting at the table with the sketch stamp and a tall pile of sketch papers. The papers have all be cut to be narrower than the book, but taller than the book. At the top of each sketch paper is the name of the character to be sketched in that book. I grab a stack of books and I put a stamp and a sketch paper just inside the back cover. The primary reason for the sketch papers is so that we can tell without opening the book what character has been sketched inside. This becomes critically important during the packing phase of shipping. The books get boxed back up and the exterior of each box is labeled with the character that is sketched on the books inside. I try to put only one type of sketch per box to prevent confusion during the packing phase. Because Howard and the neighbor moved faster than me, I sometimes had to box up signed but not-yet-stamped books and stack them to be stamped later. “Later” turned out to be 4 days later this time.

After signing over 1400 books, Howard’s hand had to rest before moving in the next section of work. All those boxes of signed and stamped books were hauled down to Dragon’s Keep. Then Howard opened up the boxes of books, drew a picture in each book, and boxed them back up. This time we had 1000 sketch editions. We allotted three weeks of time for Howard to do the sketching. He’s trying to do about 100 per day. Many of the signed books did not need to be stamped or sketched. These just remain in boxes waiting for the shipping day.

While Howard is doing the sketching, I take some time to double check our physical inventory against the reports generated by our store. In theory our store will only sell what we have, but anyone who has run inventory will tell you that things get lost and misplaced. In this case I made several orders to various suppliers to make sure we have the necessary inventory. As the new inventory comes in, I stack it all in boxes. It will all need to be transported down to Dragon’s Keep for the packing phase. I also make a count of the types of boxes and need and what quantities. The different shipping methods have different boxing requirements. The majority of our orders are a single book in a fold-up box. Larger orders go out in 2″, 3″, or 4″ boxes that we order through Uline.com. The flat rate orders require special boxes that I have to acquire from the post office. I place orders now, so that the packing materials will be here before the big shipping day.

Next phase: Phase 4 Printing Postage.